January 2010 Survey

Survey introduction

The January 2010 survey was the first survey carried out using a format where individual cleanroom users were asked about their view on various parts of using DTU Danchip's facilities and in particular the cleanroom facilities.
The questionaire was send to 84 registered users (based on the logging of cleanroom use) unfortunately 7 of the e-mail adresses were obsolete and thus the mails bounced, which brought the total number of potential answers to 77. In total 24 persons answered the questionaire which means an answer fraction of 31% or 29% (depending on whether or not the bounces should be included in the total).
This page deals with the comments given as part of the questionaire. Danchip values this feedback highly and action has already been taken on a number of the issues raised.

Comments

The comments appear here as they were written in the feedback field of the questionaire. In a few cases they have been anonymized.

Comment 1

It would be a great improvement if you could make the full documentation of the equipment available through labmanager. Most equipment has extensive manufacturer manuals which could often aid the researcher in obtaining detailed information on functionality and operation quick and easy. That would also save time of Danchip personel.

Action: We will make documentation available where it is not so today.
Danchip comments: We think it makes a lot of sense to make information avaliable to our users. A number of manufacturers manuals are already available in LabManager, should you miss one, please let us know and we will make it available. In some situations we have the unfortunate case that the documentation is only available in hardcopy, here the documentation will be scanned and made available upon request.
A word of caution is that even though the manufacturers manual describes certain functions it is not allowed to use these unless they are also described in the Danchip manual for the equipment. Feel free to contact the process responsible for a piece of equipment if you wish to discuss the capabilities and/or expand the funtionality.

Comment 2

I'm not really unsatisfied with the points where I checked "unsatisfied" but I think these points could be improved. E.g. problems with DI water, evacuation alarm sometimes, shortage of ZEP, SEM Helix detector broken since months. But of course I know that some of these things are not Danchips fault and that machine spare parts or chemicals cannot be bought like going to the supermarket.

Action on DI water: Linking DI water control to process control system.
Action on Evacuation alarms: Thorough investigation of each evacuation .
Action on Shortage of ZEP: Reevaluate neccesary stock.
Action on SEM Helix detector broken for a long time: Improve coummunication through LabManager.

Danchip comment to DI Water issues: We have situations where the system needs to be inspected and restarted. These incidences happen at irregular intervals. In order to be able to respond even faster than now Danchip will link the DI water alarm directly to the central process monitor system. This should improve the response time.
Danchip comment to evacuation alarms: Danchip dislikes 'false positive' evacuation alarms and do a thorough investigation of each and everyone of them to avoid a similar situation in the future. With that said however we will always err to the side of caution and thus rather have one alarm too many than one real alarm too few.
Danchip comment to ZEP shortage: We strive to always keep certain materials in stock - ZEP is one of them. We have evaluated our ordering/stocking procedure and revised it so as to minimize such incidents in the future. You can help us in this regard by informing us if you plan on making changes to the amount of materials used. This applies both to ZEP and to other materials, if you know you will be using a lot, please warn us in advance, some materials have leadtimes in excess of 16 weeks and Danchip needs to balance consumption and stock.

Comment 3

You get very good help when you ask for simple things, which can be adressed right away. For more complex problems the follow-up is often very limited, often the problem seems "forgotten" - or at least not prioritised.

Action: New postbox: suggestion@danchip.dtu.dk.
Danchip comment: This is most unfortunate. Danchip is opening more channels of communication, one such channel is the new mailgroup called suggestion@danchip.dtu.dk. Issues send to this mail address will be collected on a weekly basis and a designated anchor person will make sure all issues are dealt with. At the latest a response will be send out after two weeks. This mailbox is a supplement to other routes of communication: direct discussions, mails, group discussions and surveys. Danchip values your input on all matters big and small, simple or complex.

Comment 4

II: The ultrasound for the fine strip in Cleanroom 4 was out of order every time I have wanted to use it in November and the beginning of December. That was very inconvenient. I would really appreciate a permanent solution to this problem. According to LabManager, a new ultrasonic generator has been installed now, so if that solves the problem, that's fine of course - I haven't used the equipment since the beginning of December.

Action: More information. Still trying to solve the problem. Will tighten our acceptance tests for wet chemistry.
Danchip comment general: An even tighter focus will be placed on using LabManager for informing cleanroom users about activities and deadlines for equipment which causes problems. On top of this a significant lesson learned with the recently delivered wet chemistry equipment is that we need to tighten our acceptance tests.
Danchip comment specific on ultrsound equipment: We are not at all satisfied with the ultrasound equipment. We have run into the situation that the supplier of the equipment has gone bancrupt and his sub-supplier cannot solve the problems to our satisfaction. We are currently trying to get the problems solved using another company to fix it.

Comment 5

The humidity instability in the cleanroom destroyed all my chips over the summer :-(

Action: Renovation of the humidifier/dehumidifier system over the summer.
Danchip comment: We sympathise with you and are sorry about your loss. The humidity problems are very high on Danchips priority list. Currently additional capacity has been installed to be able to humidify the very dry winter air. Over the summer the humidifier/dehumidifier system will be renovated by DTU Campus Service/DTU Danchip and external consultants and companies. Our goal is to get a solution to the humidity problems once and for all. As a side note Danchip's internal quality standard for the cleanroom is that it should be within specification more than 97% of the time - the humidity control problems need to be solved before we can get to this point.

Comment 6

It would be nice to have at least some lab technicians or process engineers, who stay after 16:00.

Action: No action.
Danchip comment: From a user point of view it makes a lot of sense to have qualified personell availble into the late afternoon/early evening. However at present, consideration for Danchip employees private life means that there will not at this stage be taken any steps to assure assistance from Danchip personell outside normal working hours: 8-16, Monday to Friday

Comment 7

Some of the machine manuals should be updated

Action: All manuals are being updated
Danchip comment: Yes they should - In fact all of DTU Danchip's manuals are currently being updated as part of aligning our procedures in order to qualify for ISO 9001:2008 certification.

Comment 8

It would be nice with a lot more tweezers (normal tweezers, not vacuum tweezers) in the cleanroom. I guess that should be fairly inexpensive, and it's a bit frustrating to walk around in the cleanroom many times a day looking for tweezers.

Action: We have ordered in excess of 150 new tweezer.
Danchip comment: We will make more tweezers available in the cleanroom. When the new batch arrives it will be fully acceptable to have a tweezer that you personally take care of and store on your shelf in the cleanroom. It should go without saying, but then again sometimes the obvious needs to be stated: Please do not remove tweezers from the cleanroom. If the tweezers are no longer in the cleanroom they cannot be used to do cleanroom work, not by you nor anyone else. If you need a set of tweezers for work outside the cleanroom please come by Yvonne Gyrsting and she can supply you with one and have it billed correctly.

Comment 9

Sometimes a piece of equipment is reported on LabManager as "out of order" or "limited use" for quite a long time. For instance, 7-up 6 in Cleanroom 4 has been on limited use since September and 7-up 4 was recently on limited use for almost a month.

Action: More information. Tighter acceptance tests.
Danchip comment: Danchip will strive to make more precise information available as to why a certain piece of equipment is in 'limited use' and how it can be used, when in this state. For the particular cases of the new 7-Up systems the status was due to an apparent discrepancy between the temperature reported by the system and the actual fluid temperature. Further analysis of the issue revealed that this behavior is how a system constructed the way it is should behave - thus there is no real problem in the operation. However the fact that it behaves differently from the old system needs to be realized and conveyed to the users.

Comment 10

It would be very useful for me, if there were an optical profilometer in the cleanroom. I often have to measure the depth of grooves which are too deep and too narrow to measure with a stylus profilometer such as the Dektak.

Action: Awareness of new equipment wish.
Danchip comment: Wishes for new equipment is always valued by Danchip. The clearer the description of the desired equipment the better. If you have your eyes set on a certain piece of equipment go ahead and let us know. Danchip maintains a list of equipment/technologies where a broad userbase is expected and this equipment is what we are actively trying to find partners and funding for.

Comment 11

Sometimes difficult to find glassware, tweezers which are surely clean and readily available. fx: most of glassware in the new cleanroom part used for metal lift-off etc. is quite dirty and not useful for e.g. development of sensitive nanostructures.

Action: New tweezers, see also comment 8. The wet chemistry equipment group is looking into improvement possibilities
Danchip comment: By opening up for personal tweezers we expect people to take care of these and maintain them at a cleanliness level they themselves are happy with. The glassware issue requires further analysis and is currently being investigated by Danship's Wet Chemistry equipment group.